There was news out of Chicago about three cases overturned on false and apparently false confessions.

One of the cases involves a woman convicted of killing her 4-year-old; the detective said she admitted to wrapping a window-treatment cord around his neck out of frustration. Except that it appears that the boy choked accidentally, while playing, as witnessed by his 5-year-old brother, and the mother may not even have been home at the time.

I've been watching pretrial hearings for Brett Kanoff, the Port Jervis man charged with murder and manslaughter in the September death of his 13-month-old son, Cameron. Kanoff was arrested Oct. 2 after state and Port Jervis police interviewed him.

Police and prosecutors say Kanoff suffocated Cameron out of fatigue and frustration with his crying. After Kanoff's arraignment, Chief Trial Assistant District Attorney John Geidel acknowledged that the medical examiner's initial finding on cause of death was "pending further studies."

The defense says there were no signs of trauma — no bruises, no cuts. They believe Cameron's death was natural, the result of an illness in a baby who was born prematurely.

Kanoff's lawyer, Ben Ostrer, says the confession was false, the product of leading questioning and pressure on a vulnerable suspect.

Days after Cameron died, Kanoff's Facebook page showed a young man who was exhausted from working a roofing job in 90-degree heat, but who adored his wife — even though they were having problems — and his boys.

But obviously, there is a dead baby, and that's a tragedy all around.

There is no suggestion of police misconduct or corruption, no signs or claims that Kanoff was beaten or threatened. In fact, the interview videos show police keeping even tones with Kanoff, even as a detective suggests he's lying about something.

They also show Kanoff clearly in grief, wracked by guilt. But is it the guilt of a killer, or the guilt of a parent whose child died in his care?

The police make some leading suggestions to Kanoff, such as that he would have had to be leaning to cover the baby's face, or that 25 seconds wasn't very long — was he sure it wasn't longer? — and Kanoff "goes for it," to use Ostrer's phrase. What isn't clear is whether Kanoff is genuinely describing his own actions, or whether he's telling the detectives the story he thinks they want to hear.

At the state police barracks in Greenville, Kanoff says he covered Cameron's face, but the boy was moving after he let go. By the end of a later session at the Port Jervis police station, after a detective challenges him, he says Cameron was actually still, that he only wanted to believe the boy was moving. Which is real?

Judge Nicholas De Rosa will have to rule on the admissibility of the videos; they'll likely get in, and they'll be part of the larger package of evidence at trial.